Erin Toohey (2010) researched the phonological development in hearing children of Deaf parents. Hearing children of Deaf parents develop speech and language in an atypical way. The environment for these children consist of lack of linguistic auditory input, resulting in few opportunities to acquire spoken language. These children are ultimately learning two languages at one time. More specifically, “children of Deaf adults often times acquire both American Sign Language (ASL) and English simultaneously, also known as bimodal bilingualism” (Toohey, 2010, p. 6).
